I Hate Dialysis Message Board
Dialysis Discussion => Dialysis: General Discussion => Topic started by: Restorer on February 24, 2009, 07:19:52 PM
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Well. What a week. Last Wednesday, I started having some abdominal discomfort during the day. It felt just like a had eaten something that didn't agree with me downstream. Over the day, it persisted, so I decided to do my last PD exchange before going to bed a little early. I confirmed what I was suspecting - I had a cloudy bag. So I called my PD nurse (and left a message) and headed to the ER, where they kept me overnight and gave me two doses of IV antibiotics and some IV Betalol because my blood pressure and heartrate were high. They also took my cloudy bag and an additional sample from me to culture (turned out to be staph). Over the next couple days the pain went away, and my bags are no longer cloudy, but I'm still using antibiotics in new bags overnight, last night and Friday night.
I don't know how much it's related, but the weekend before I got peritonitis, I developed a bit of a cough and fever. It persisted until this weekend, and then got worse. On Sunday night, I woke up in the middle of the night completely short of breath, feeling like my lungs were constricted. It felt like I had way too much dialysate in me, so I drained it out and that helped, at least while I was sitting up. I tried to go back to sleep, but found myself awake and short of breath again an hour later, with bad lung crackles when I exhaled. I couldn't sleep the rest of the night because the crackles made me cough badly, and they were terrible when I wasn't sitting straight up. The same thing recurred last night.
I will be seeing my doctor on Friday. I hope I can last until then.
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Sounds like a call to the Dr and ER visit is needed. I hope you feel better soon. :grouphug;
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Sorry this happened to you. Hope you're soon in the pink!
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Please take care of yourself. This really sounds like you need ER to me. Let us know how things go.
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I hope you get sorted out soon, good luck :thumbup;
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hope you are better
sorry you are feeling crappy
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Hope you are doing better today. Don't forget to let us know how things are going
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Hope you feel better soon.
It is kinda sad in my opinion that your DOCTOR wont see you sooner.
But what do i know.
Needless i hope they get you situated soon.
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:cuddle; Take care of yourself. Is sounds like you're on top of things, though. Sorry you're having to go through this.
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Sorry your having such a hard time I hope you get to feeling better soon. :grouphug;
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Hang in there!
:cuddle;
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I don't think I would wait until Friday. I think another trip to the ER would be advisable. I hope you are feeling better soon. x
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I called my PD nurse again this morning after another night of no sleep, and she managed to get me seen at noon today at the dialysis clinic. I have absent lower lung sounds, and my blood pressure is still very high. My doctor upped my blood pressure med dose again, and directed me to be vigilant and use 4.25% fluid to try to pull some fluid off my lungs. He wants me to call if I'm not starting to get any better tomorrow.
My problem is so bad, though, that I just can't cope by myself. I can hardly get to the bathroom without having to rest before coming back (and getting there, just around the corner, makes me sweat). My shortness of breath is so bad right now. So I've called in help - I'm going to see if my family can help me out, bring me back home for a few days, take care of me.
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A good idea to have family come and take care of you. Hope you feel better soon.
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You do need family right now. Please let us know how you are doing. :cuddle;
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I hope the 4.25% helps you. When I was doing PD, I did get overloaded and asked if I could do a session of hemo to help pull some fluid. Is that an option for you?
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Hopefully you will feel better soon.
:2thumbsup; :2thumbsup;
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I hope you are feeling better soon! :grouphug;
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Your condition sounds serious to me. I hope you are now with someone who is keeping a watchful eye over you. :cuddle;
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Wish you a recovery soon!
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I am sending all of my positive vibes to you. :cuddle; I am glad that you have some family to look after you. Feel better soon.
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:grouphug;
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I saw my doctor again today, and got him to order a chest x-ray. It looks like I have pneumonia. I will be seeing another doctor, a pulmonary specialist, tomorrow afternoon.
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Hope they get this cleared up for you.
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Thx for checking back in.
Hoping they get you sorted fast.
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Sorry to hear about the pneumonia, but at least they figured out what the problem is and hopefully they will get it corrected quickly. Thanks for updating us.
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I hope you are feeling better by this point (or at least getting some treatment). I'm so glad I got a pneumonia shot this year! Please update us on how you are doing!!
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Well, I never replied to this to finish it up.
Turns out it wasn't really pneumonia. The peritonitis that I had threw off toxins that caused the capillaries in my lungs to be more permeable to fluid. My CAPD has never been truly sufficient, and I'm a fast transporter, so I was always fluid overloaded. That fluid found its way into my lungs and stuck around.
In March I finally got on the cycler, and with the much shorter dwells, I finally stopped reabsorbing fluid and I started ultrafiltrating a lot. One of the first nights I was on the cycler, it took off 5 pounds of water. It really helped, and within a few days I was no longer puffy everywhere, and I didn't feel like the marshmallow man anymore, and my cough went away.
That was great, until recently. Two weeks ago, the peritonitis came back with a vengeance. I woke up at 2:30am during my cycling with abdominal pain, more diffuse and more intense than the previous case of peritonitis. With some Tylenol, I stuck it out until morning, then went into the ER and got it treated. They gave me intraperitoneal vancomycin, and a prescription for oral Cipro.
Then yesterday. It came back again at about noon. The pain was mild and tolerable, but when it didn't go away after a couple hours, my plan was to call my doctor for more antibiotics. Unfortunately, I didn't get the chance. That night I hooked up to the cycler, and the first cycle was torture. I pretty much bypassed the second exchange and aborted the treatment, and went in again to the ER. This time the pain was very much unbearable - the worst pain I'd ever felt. It seemed like it took forever to finish all the paperwork and triage, then I finally got a bed, and it took another 20 minutes to take blood samples and get ready to give me some pain medication.
But they did eventually give me enough Dilaudid to fix me up, and from that point I was much more comfortable. But it was still another night in the hospital, and that's not something I like. They gave me IV gentamycin and peritoneal vancomycin, and took a chest X-ray and a urine sample, then finally sent me home in the morning. I've spent most of the day sleeping (or trying to sleep).
This is getting ridiculous. I'm going to try everything I can to fight this bug aggressively. I just hope my doctor can keep up.
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Sorry to hear about all of the difficulties.
Make sure they are drawing a culture of your fluid so that they can prescribe the most effective antibiotic to treat the peritonitis.
Keep us updated.
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:grouphug; Hope they get it fixed soon!
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Make sure they are drawing a culture of your fluid so that they can prescribe the most effective antibiotic to treat the peritonitis.
Yup, each time I've been in, they've taken a sample to test, as well as blood cultures just to be sure. It always turned out to be staph. My PD nurse even took a sample a few weeks after my first infection, which showed that there was still some staph bug hanging around.
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Yup, each time I've been in, they've taken a sample to test, as well as blood cultures just to be sure. It always turned out to be staph. My PD nurse even took a sample a few weeks after my first infection, which showed that there was still some staph bug hanging around.
Have you been able to figure out why it keeps coming back? Is it that they aren't able to completely get rid of it with the antibiotics? Maybe they need to prescribe them for a longer period of time?
Or is there possibly a source of contamination that needs to be tracked down?
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I'm sorry to hear this. I hope you get this kicked soon! :grouphug;
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I hope you get better soon. What a ride!
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I don't know why it keeps coming back. I do everything by the book, and my PD nurse has praised my technique, so I don't think I could be contaminating myself. I'm hoping there's nothing sticking around on the catheter that would cause it have to come out to fix this.
On top of all that, now I'm not draining properly. My bags are continuously cloudy and fibrinous, so I'm suspecting that either there's some fibrin blocking the catheter somehow, or it's gotten tangled up in omentum somewhere. Either way, I'm consistently draining less than I put in, and my fluid weight is going up again and I'm starting to get some of those lung symptoms back. When I go in on Monday, I'll be asking for some heparin with my antibiotic dose.
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It sounds like the original infection never really went away! :( Maybe the course of antibiotics should be longer in order to kill this bug completely.
I hope they can get this under control and you start to feel better soon. Good luck! :cuddle;